Opening Theme
Magic Number by Maaya Sakamoto

Not my favourite song out of this series however it is still pretty good. It is decent for the genre of the show and the lyrics are also suitable. The animation is also decent however I think it may cover Kobato just a tad too much instead of the other characters (I would say over 95% of it has just Kobato).

Ending Theme
Jellyfish’s Confession by Megumi Nakajima

The music isn’t in my genre and the animation (The bottle spinning on screen) just isn’t enough to be a satisfying ending sequence for me. Shame considering the pretty good opening sequence. Still, it does take pretty good effort to get a high score from me in regards to ending sequences and it isn’t the most boring I have seen.

Opinion

I have always enjoyed adaptations of CLAMP manga, such as Chobits, Angelic Layer, CCS etc and this one made it on to my list automatically for that reason. However… since it has been a while since I watched an anime from their works, I must admit I was a bit hesitant about this series, especially considering that Kobato hadn’t been brought to my attention until it was announced in anime format a few months ago. Overall, it was a pretty impressive episode and kind of maintained the humourous situations all the way throughout the episode.

Graphics were pretty damn good! This episode takes place during the sakura time in Japan and therefore they kept everything vibrant with Cherry Blossoms. As well, they put a lot of detail to the whole town throughout the episode and as night set in, the landscape looked very pretty. Iroyogi is in my own opinion the most well designed character, not necessarily for the simple stuffed dog appearance that he has but instead the way that they animated his mood, and whilst he looked cute and cuddly sometimes, whenever Kobato stuffed up or he felt like it, he was able to turn pretty creepy. Kobato was also designed very well and I personally enjoyed the chibified (If you could call it that) scenes where she does the Hot Pot of Hell or feeds the crows.

Music wise was also pretty good. Especially near the end where she sings to calm a baby. Wasn’t half bad singing and it is definately not singing I would complain about having in an anime a couple of times. The voice acting is also very good and suited the personality well, althrough I admit Iroyogi’s voice shocked me the first time I heard it since I was expecting a voice more like the other CLAMP sidekicks.

A summary from MyAnimeList.net describes the storyline as:

Kobato is sweet and perky girl, but also extremely naive about the world around her. She has a “mission”, which is to fill a mysterious bottle of hers with the suffering from people’s hearts so her wish to go a certain place that she desires to go can be granted. However, she must not fall in love with a particular boy she works with and whose heart she must heal.

which to be honest is something I would expect from a CLAMP series and does give me the same impression as I got from Shugo Chara!, althrough it seems like this may have more of a focus on the person instead of the X-Eggs. Character development however is quite little in this episode since all we learn is that she can sing and that she is wanting to go to a place she can only go to by filling a bottle she has to recieve by passing this episodes exam.

I do have high expectations of this anime so I will be watching another few episodes of this…. hopefully it does live up to them

Chance of Blogging: Good/Medium